{"id":1408,"date":"2010-02-23T11:24:11","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T16:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gridironstuds.com\/blog\/?p=1408"},"modified":"2010-02-23T11:30:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T16:30:08","slug":"top-2010-recruit-killed-in-murder-suicide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/top-2010-recruit-killed-in-murder-suicide\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 2010 Recruit Killed in Murder Suicide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It’s always sad when you hear stories like this.\u00a0 A young man on his way to a promising future only to have it cut short by violence.\u00a0 It seems we are getting at least one of these stories per year now as youngsters struggle to get out of their environment and onto the promise of a great opportunity.<\/p>\n

The latest victim is Rajaan Bennett out of Powder Springs, Georgia (McEachern High School).\u00a0\u00a0 Bennett was an outstanding running back at McEachern as he racked up over 1,800 yards his senior year and this was after grinding out 1,001 as a junior.\u00a0 From a recruiting stand point,\u00a0 Bennett was a 5’11” 210 lbs, could bench press 325 lbs and squat over 500.\u00a0\u00a0 That’s a stud by anyone’s standards and with that Bennett had the grades to get into Vanderbilt,\u00a0 the school he signed with on February 4th.\u00a0\u00a0 The promise of a great education and possible football future laid ahead of him.\u00a0\u00a0 However,\u00a0 it was all snuffed out last Thursday as Bennett intervened in an argument between his mother and her ex-boyfriend.\u00a0\u00a0 Apparently,\u00a0 the argument was over money and got out of hand.\u00a0\u00a0 When all was said and done,\u00a0 Bennett was shot and killed by the mother’s ex-boyfriend, Clifton O’Neal Steager a Detroit native who also severely wounded Bennett’s friend before turning the gun on himself.<\/p>\n

Every year now we are seeing young men who have made a tremendous sacrifice to achieve and when they do,\u00a0 they have it all thrown away by senseless violence whether it comes in the form of domestic, gang or juvenile.\u00a0 It’s a horrible testament to what’s going in our American cities as young men live a day to day struggle to survive.<\/p>\n

You can check out Bennett’s exploits on the field on his highlight video:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WhVUVhAaK0g[\/youtube]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s always sad when you hear stories like this.\u00a0 A young man on his way to a promising<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[427],"class_list":["post-1408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-high-school","tag-rajaan-bennett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gridironstuds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}